The electrons in a current never move anything close to the speed of light (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_velocity). It is the propagation of the changes in the electric field caused by the electrons moving that moves at the speed of light. It is more like a tube full of marbles (a stretched analogy). If you push the marble on one end the marble at the other end moves almost instantly. The marble you pushed didn’t move all that distance.
Yes, the heat in conductors is caused by the electrons kinetic energy. No, it doesn’t really change the propagation speed of the current since that is the electric field propagating. There is certainly power lost there.
It is not easy to transmit DC over long distances (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents). Edison tried hard to push the adoption of DC going so far as to publicly electrocute elephants with high voltage AC as a PR stunt to scare people. You can find videos of this online if you want. It didn’t work because it just so much more efficient to transmit AC voltage and use a transformers to step it down.
The wiki Currents war article ends with a brief mention of HVDC. China utilizes it in 2019, and they certainly are not stupid, so...
The HVDC article lists some pros & cons of it over AC. At a quick glance, there are more pros. And what of the biggest disadvantage? Converter stations cost. And what do they do? They convert that DC into AC, so it can be distributed into households and then switched back to DC inside the devices so they can use electricity! All of this clusterfuck nonsense can be avoided if they use all-out DC system in the 1st place!
I guess using a war more than 120 years ago to justify current (pun intended) situation is not very good.
The electrons in a current never move anything close to the speed of light (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_velocity). It is the propagation of the changes in the electric field caused by the electrons moving that moves at the speed of light. It is more like a tube full of marbles (a stretched analogy). If you push the marble on one end the marble at the other end moves almost instantly. The marble you pushed didn’t move all that distance.
Yes, the heat in conductors is caused by the electrons kinetic energy. No, it doesn’t really change the propagation speed of the current since that is the electric field propagating. There is certainly power lost there.
It is not easy to transmit DC over long distances (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents). Edison tried hard to push the adoption of DC going so far as to publicly electrocute elephants with high voltage AC as a PR stunt to scare people. You can find videos of this online if you want. It didn’t work because it just so much more efficient to transmit AC voltage and use a transformers to step it down.
The wiki Currents war article ends with a brief mention of HVDC. China utilizes it in 2019, and they certainly are not stupid, so...
The HVDC article lists some pros & cons of it over AC. At a quick glance, there are more pros. And what of the biggest disadvantage? Converter stations cost. And what do they do? They convert that DC into AC, so it can be distributed into households and then switched back to DC inside the devices so they can use electricity! All of this clusterfuck nonsense can be avoided if they use all-out DC system in the 1st place!
I guess using a war more than 120 years ago to justify current (pun intended) situation is not very good.